Why this section matters
A developer finishing a feature is only half the job. The change still has to be tested, packaged, delivered to servers and released to users without breaking anything. In many small companies this is done by hand: someone copies files to a server late at night and hopes. DevOps replaces that with automation, so releasing a fix to a MoMo merchant app can happen many times a day, safely. Ghanaian DevOps adverts name continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) and Docker more than almost anything else after the cloud itself.
What this section covers
- Git for teams. Branches, pull requests, code review and tags. Every pipeline starts with a Git event, so a team's Git habits shape everything after.
- Continuous integration and delivery. A pipeline that builds the code, runs tests and deploys it automatically every time someone pushes a change.
- Containers with Docker. Packaging an app with everything it needs, so it runs the same on a laptop, in the pipeline and on a server.
How the three fit together
Picture the journey of one small change:
- Napari fixes a bug in a school fees app on a new Git branch and opens a pull request.
- The pipeline starts automatically. It installs dependencies, runs the tests and builds a container image.